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Publix: our ad is not anti-abortion.

All it took was one tweet from right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin to land a southern supermarket's seemingly anodyne mother's day ad in the social media spotlight.

On Monday, the blogger and Fox News regular directed her 500k+ Twitter followers to a post on conservative hub Twitchy, praising Florida-based supermarket giant Publix (revenues: $27 billion) for a mother's day ad -- incidentally, one that first aired last year:

The commercial by the 1,000-store chain features a heavily pregnant mother and young daughter bonding sweetly in a kitchen, discussing the imminent arrival of the little girl's baby sibling as they prepare a meal. Social media blog Mashable calls the 60-second spot "a poignant tribute to moms."

Soon enough, Team Malkin at Twitchy (she and her husband run the show) joined anti-abortion site Life News in appropriating the ad as a paean to the pro-life movement.

Life News posted the ad with the headline "Publix Mother’s Day Commercial Affirms Dignity of Unborn Babies", adding a statistic to bolster the ad's apparent pro-life messaging:

The little girl asks, “Can the baby hear me?” to which the mother responds, “I think so!” (It’s true: according to the Mayo Clinic, babies begin to hear and respond to sound around week 18 of pregnancy.)

The powers that be at Publix were shocked and somewhat bemused to learn their ad was being celebrated by the anti-abortion movement.

"There's no subliminal messaging, no anti-abortion message," said director of media Maria Brous, who explained that the ad was designed to show the bond between mother and child, shared over food. "That was not the intent."

Brous added that the spot will air all this week, having debuted this time last year without incident. "It's a mother's day commercial," she said. "It's centered around food. That's really all it was."

Update: Michelle Malkin responded via Twitter, saying: "Pro-lifers loved the ad. Why is it so imperative for Forbes to "refute" their reax?" You can read the whole exchange here. If you have the stomach for it, you can find some of her fans' charming and rational responses on Twitter too.